


"The Night We Met"

by prodigalpoet



Series: Soulmates [26]
Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: #KillingEveWeekPromptThree #MorningAfter #Loss #Longing #Sorrow #Gratitude, #grief, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-26 21:41:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30112440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigalpoet/pseuds/prodigalpoet
Summary: ****Trigger Warning: Major Character Death, Cancer; this piece will be heavy but then it will become lighter with progressive chapters. Please feel free to skip over this if it will be too much right now. Please take care.****Eve dies and Villanelle reacts, remembering memories they shared via flashbacks.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Series: Soulmates [26]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1793398
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24
Collections: Killing Eve Week 2021





	"The Night We Met"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OliviaMell241995](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OliviaMell241995/gifts).



> Piece titled after the Lord Huron classic
> 
> Killing Eve Fan Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXKah6_Iw38

Eve passes quietly, right before the sun emerges and bathes her body in streams of light. When Villanelle wakes up, a few seconds later, it takes her a few minutes to realize that Eve is gone. After she unwraps her body from Eve’s and kisses her on the cheek, she murmurs good morning in her ear, brushing away the wispy hair lying flat against the nape of her neck, hair that had once been so full and thick (one of Villanelle’s many weaknesses about Eve, those soft, dark curls).

"Eve. Eve, wake up. Eve??"

The urgency in Villanelle's voice cascades like water when she discovers that Eve is no longer breathing. Naturally, Eve had done her best to prepare Villanelle for this moment, knowing how devastated Villanelle would be without her. They had spoken about the inevitable for months, as soon as Eve had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But nothing could prepare Villanelle for the expansive sense of loss that descends upon the room like a shroud. Villanelle collapses into bed and pulls Eve into her arms, weeping over the body of the only person she had ever loved. She didn't need to contact the on-call nurse who had been taking care of Eve to determine that Eve was gone; Villanelle knew what the gasping breath of death looked like in others but this was the first time she was truly feeling the emptiness of its echo.

"What am I going to do without you?," Villanelle asks Eve, tears trickling down her cheeks. 

She smiles a small smile when Eve's voice pops into her head: "First, you need to shower because you stink and you can't stay in bed all day with my dead body. I know how freakishly morbid you can get but that's a level not even I would mess with. Second, you need to open up my journal that is on the bedside table and go down the list of people to call for the farewell ceremony. Make sure you call Imo Julia first. With my mother being gone, her sister is the matriach of the entire family. She will spread the news to the rest of the relatives. Third, you know what to do with my ashes. Where I want them to be scattered. Fourth, take care of yourself. You have to live your life, V. I want you to enjoy every moment. You made sure I always did."

Villanelle's lips turn upwards and she kisses Eve's forehead softly before mumbling to herself that she might have unlocked a level of morbidity even she did not anticipate reaching so soon. She steps out of bed and pulls the covers over Eve's body so it looks like she is simply sleeping. "You're still very bossy, Eve," she states, walking towards the bathroom and stripping off her clothes before stepping into the shower.

"I had to be bossy to make sure you did what you needed to get done. I was the organized one in the relationship. Villanelle, you were good at many things, but being organized was not one of them," Eve's voice rings out, crackling against the steam rising from Villanelle's body as she shampoos her hair and douses her body sponge in body wash before running it over herself and rinsing off.

The rest of the day runs by Villanelle like a train. Eve's body is taken away and she is told to pick up the ashes the next morning. Relatives are called, starting with Eve's deceased mother's younger sister, Julia. Villanelle doesn't eat. Julia asks her to come over but she declines. She picks out an outfit to wear to the farewell ceremony and sends a photo of Eve to the local print shop so they can blow it up and put it on poster board and it can serve as a display piece at the front of the church. She calls Irina and Elena who proceed to call the rest of the members within the large group of friends Eve introduced Villanelle to over the years. Text messages and missed phone calls start flowing in. Imo Julia knocks on the door and leaves a tray of food outside, texting Villanelle and telling her Eve would want her to eat.

Villanelle pulls the tray inside and eats two plates of food before stumbling to bed, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen from crying at the silence following her around the house she and Eve bought together, thick like a shadow.

The morning after Eve's passing...

The reception starts and ends too rapidly for Villanelle to notice. Eve's family members hug and kiss Villanelle and quietly ask her to stay in touch. Imo Julia pulls Villanelle to the side after Villanelle's eyes find her within the crowd of people who start to trickle out of the church following the ceremony's conclusion.

"Oksana, you are looking very haggard," Eve's aunt states, looking Villanelle up and down with a stern look eerily similar to the one Eve's mother often wore whenever she and Eve showed up embarassingly late to family gathering because they were having sex.

"I am okay, Imo. I am exhausted. I don't know what to do without her."

"You should stay with me, for awhile. I moved closer to you and Eve so I could watch over her. Her mother would be upset with the both of us if you disappeared, now?"

Imo Julia gives Villanelle a knowing look, almost as if Eve had had a conversation with her and warned her that Villanelle might run away and never look back, once she died.

"I won't disappear. I can't leave the house we lived in. Sixteen years of memories...," Villanelle whispers, her voice raspy, as the years run through her mind like a Rolodex.

"Thank you for giving her those sixteen years. I have never seen my niece that happy."

Villanelle starts to cry again and Imo Julia embraces her tightly. "Here, take this. Eve wrote you something after she was diagnosed. She wanted you to read it on this day. Promise me you will come over after you have read it. She wanted that, too. She specifically requested that. Please do not let her down."

"I will come over, I promise." Villanelle pockets the envelope and kisses Eve's aunt on the cheek before turning away from her, walking outside, and getting into the car. Heart hammering against her chest, she opens the envelope and pulls it to her nose, trying to see if Eve's perfume is somehow lingering on the paper. It isn't.

As if by magic, Eve's voice floods the car like oncoming headlights: "You have my perfume at home, don't you? The one you loved so much. Your one, V. I loved that sexy scent, too. I never told you that but I did. I enjoyed teasing you for being so egotistical. God, you were such a brat."

Villanelle laughs-cries over the steering wheel, her nose remembering the scent of the perfume Eve sprayed against her neck and her wrist, just for her. 

"Don't read that now. Go home and take a bath. Soak in some hot water. Let the tub hold you, make you feel safe. You look very sexy, by the way."

"Eve! So scandalous! Flirting with me on the day of your farewell ceremony?"

"Oh, please. You flirted with me in a public bathroom the night we met."

"That is when I fell in love with you, that night."

"See, you told me this so many times, yet I still can't believe that you, of all people, could fall in love with someone in a public bathroom of all places. You couldn't have picked some fancy place in Paris?"

"Miracles do happen, Eve. You kissed me on a bus, remember?"

"Oh, I remember. I still wish I hadn't thrown that cake off the roof. Are you going home now? Leave before Imo Julia comes out and actively drags you from the car and into her own. You know how she is..."

"I do know how she is. Exactly like your mother. You know, it's kind of nice, hearing your voice in my ear. Not as creepy as I thought it would be."

"Do you want to know what else I can do?"

Villanelle feels her neck tingling and looks in the mirror, almost expecting to see Eve sitting behind the driver's seat.

"Did you just kiss me?"

"Yes."

"Hmm. I like that."

"For every red light you actually stop at, you'll get a kiss. I know how you drive when you are upset."

"You never berated my driving skills when I was feeling you up."

Villanelle laughs when she hears a scoff. 

"What? It's true, you didn't."

"Just shut up and drive safely, asshole."

"Your favorite asshole?"

"My one and only, favorite asshole."

Villanelle hums and rips out of the parking lot, laughing evilly as she hears a string of curse words gush over her head like a garland of Christmas lights.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy this piece, Olivia. Your requested scene will be coming up! Thank you for reading my pieces. xx.
> 
> For everyone else, catch me on twitter and say hello @compassionchasr


End file.
